Pre-E3 2008: Moon Hands-on

Share.

Zombies are out. Mysterious aliens are in.

By Craig Harris

We were all about Dementium: The Ward when it hit the Nintendo DS last year, and after that release we couldn't wait to get our hands around Renegade Kid's next DS first-person shooter. That game is Moon, which will be published by Mastiff later this year. Mastiff made the rounds to the IGN offices earlier today where the company let us wander around the moon in a very early look at a very early version of the game in development.

Moon, like Dementium: The Ward, is a single-player first-person action adventure game. Instead of waking up with amnesia in an abandoned insane asylum, though, in this game you're Major Kane, part of a military crew on the moon who's made the discovery of a lifetime: evidence of an alien structure right there on Earth's natural satellite. Like Dementium, the mysterious story in Moon unfolds as you work your way through the levels. In the version Mastiff showed us, Moon features extensive pre-rendered cutscenes to fill players in on what's going on. Players will also learn details through Metal Gear Solid-like CODEC calls to home base.

Much of the gameplay will be action-based, but Moon will also have a few puzzles to figure out. Many of the challenges revolved around utilizing a remote droid to scurry through small holes in the wall in order to open locked doors from the other side. The droid may be tiny but it still packs a whallop with its own set of weapons to get it through the hazards.

Because Moon uses Dementium's game engine as its foundation, expect the same fast and fluid 60 frames per second 3D visuals as well as the same tight stylus based controls. The development team is still tweaking the engine to allow for a more impressive experience – though there will still be corridor shooting, the engine will allow the level designers to have more wide-open environments and plentiful enemies to shoot. Currently the demo only had one or two enemies on the screen at any one time, but we're promised that when the game gets closer to completion the enemies will swarm. The game will also have levels where you're driving out on the surface in a lunar buggy, but this mode wasn't in the version we played.

Moon, like Dementium, is single-player focused – the game looks like it could be a kick-ass deathmatch scenario, but Renegade Kid is making Moon strictly a solo experience. The designers will make sure to give players incentive to blast through the story in its higher difficulty with unlockable rewards.

Moon is scheduled for release this Fall. You can be sure we'll have more on the game as development progresses.